The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Nov 25, 2025 6:08 PM

Author:Muriel Spark,Candia McWilliam

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'

'A sublimely funny book ... it is a book to be read by all ... unforgettable and universal' Candia McWilliam

Romantic, heroic, comic and tragic, unconventional schoolmistress Jean Brodie has become an iconic figure in post-war fiction. Her glamour, unconventional ideas and manipulative charm hold dangerous sway over her girls at the Marcia Blaine Academy - 'the crème de la crème' - who become the Brodie 'set', introduced to a privileged world of adult games that they will never forget. Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was adapted into a successful stage play, and later a film directed by Ronald Neame and starring Maggie Smith.

Reviews

David Dabydeen's new novel takes as its starting point Hogarth's painting of 1732...and sets out to release the people it represents - prostitute, merchant, quack doctor and slave boy - from easy moralism, both the artist's and our own... Dabydeen has an imaginative mastery of the period, and can render it a hundred ways

—— Observer

Exhilarating...Beguiling and provocative

—— The Times

The best of the younger generation of Caribbean novelists

—— Penelope Lively

His strong vision… suggests that, for the recreation of lost meaning, it is necessary to strike off the fetters of narrative, and be released into poetry.

—— Hilary Mantel , The Independent

This is Elton at his best - mature, humane, and still a laugh a minute. At least

—— Daily Telegraph

Only Ben Elton could combine uncomfortable questions about gender politics with a gripping, page-turning narrative and jokes that make you laugh out loud

—— Tony Parsons

A very funny book about a sensitive subject ... Ben Elton the writer might even be funniter than Ben Elton the comic

—— Daily Mail

The selections from the greats are generous and well chosen

—— Guardian

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